New move in push to diversify Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain
Mayor de Blasio’s campaign to diversify high-performing schools with low-performing students took another step forward Wednesday with the unveiling of a plan for the Upper West Side and southern Harlem.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said one-quarter of the seats in each District 3 middle school will be set aside for poor kids with bad test scores and grades, in what he hopes will serve as a model for the rest of the city.
The policy will apply to students entering sixth grade in September 2019 and will likely affect 300 families during its first year, according o the Department of Education.
“Students benefit from integrated schools, and I applaud the District 3 community on taking this step to integrate their middle schools,” a state- ment by Carranza read.
District 3 teachers and school staffers will also undergo training about “implicit bias” and “culturally relevant” education as part of a citywide, $23 million effort that will continue through 2022.
The announcement followed opposition that Carranza derided in April by tweeting online news coverage of a community meeting that bore his headline, “WATCH: Wealthy white Manhattan parents angrily rant against plan to bring more black kids to their schools.”
It also came just weeks after de Blasio said he wants to do away with the state-mandated admission test for the city’s eight elite high schools.
There are 17 DOE middle schools in District 3, which covers West 59th to 122nd streets. The best include JHS 54 and MS 245.
Students can apply to as many as 12 schools, ranking them by
choice, and the schools fill their seats based on criteria that can include test scores, grades, behavior and attendance.
Under the new plan, kids who are eligible for free lunches will be placed in groups A or B, covering the lowest and secondlowest tiers of performance, based on test scores and grades.
One-quarter of seats in each middle school will be reserved for them — 10 percent for Group A, 15 percent for B.
Higher-performing students who get denied admission will be passed on to the next choice on their lists.
The Center School — whose fifth through eighth graders have included the kids of Cynthia Nixon, Samantha Bee and Louis C.K. — will be exempt from the new policy until 2020.
Some parents picking up their kids from top District 3 elementary schools opposed the plan.
A mother of two whose PS 87 fourth-grader son will be among the first kids affected said, “My No. 1 concern is wanting to make sure my children have good spots in our neighborhood schools.
“We will definitely move if my child doesn’t get into the school we want him to be in,” she said.
“I’ve been living in this neighborhood for 20 years, so that’s a dramatic thing to say.”